Back to top

Music Room

Music

I began composing music on the piano when I was five … funny little pieces written in pencil on staves that I drew with a ruler. I wrote pieces for the family but feel I only started thinking seriously about the sound world I was creating once I took up the violin aged twelve. When at school, I composed a solo violin sonata that I performed in the chapel at Charterhouse. Perhaps this is the first composition that merits any attention. The original sheet music is in the music room.

Since then, some of my greatest enjoyment has been in playing, performing, conducting and teaching music. When I began teaching klezmer workshops from 1987 onwards, the powerful folk idiom seemed to affect my 'classical' upbringing and led to the other works that lie in the room: the Three Discourses (commissioned by the Performing Rights Society) that I wrote for Ros Hawley (clarinet) and Mike Kahan (violin) and a series of string quartets.



Music Room Composer CV String Quartets Solo Violin Sonata Klezmer Scrapbook Other Work Three Discourses for Clarinet and Violin
Music Room Map

Click on an area of the image above, listed in the key to the right, to learn more…